Thank you so much for praying for us and supporting us on our recent journey to Peru!
We had an amazing experience. We refuse to call our time there a trip because that implies a journey of a defined, and probably short, duration. There are three phases to any short-term missions experience.
The preparation: you probably had a hand in that if you're reading this. We hear about the plan to send people. We decide to go. We ask for support. We pack.
The time that we're physically gone, doing the work, building relationships both with locals and our team members, and seeing a new place. That's the time that most people think is most important. However, I disagree. I feel like the most important part of any short-term missions “trip” is the third stage, the stage when you get home. That's when you either come back, settle into your old routines, and go along like it was just another or trip, or you come back and let your world be changed by what you experienced; you let yourself be open to what God had planned when he sent you there in the first place.
We're trying to do that. We're working hard to keep our hearts open to what God has in store for us. We both felt very convicted while we were. We both realized—independently—that we need to make some changes in our life so that we can be ready to follow God's will and not our own desires.
Pray for us as we contemplate and implement these changes in our lives.
Now, some specifics about Trujillo and Inca Link:
Our church, Alliance Bible Fellowship, has partnered with Inca Link over the last few years to send teams to Trujillo and Quito, Ecuador. Inca Link's mission is to reach out to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). They do this by building relationships with the nationals in the area and together figuring out what their needs are. In Trujillo, Inca Link works together with three—and soon to be four—Alliance churches in a variety of ministries. Our team worked on three ongoing projects and one brand new one while we were there: construction of the children's home, the dump ministry, the daycare, and a new opportunity at the Huanchaco salt mine community.
Inca Link, together with short-term teams like ours, and the local churches built a daycare not far from the dump in order to provide meals, school supplies, and love to local children who either don't have families or whose families aren't able to provide anything beyond the barest necessities—if they are even able to provide that. We spent an afternoon at the daycare where we held a short VBS and spent the rest of the time playing with the children and just loving on them. Believe me, those kids were not shy about hanging onto us “gringos,” and they seemed to love the time we spent there. Maybe as much as we did.
Each child in the daycare is sponsored through Compassion International. I believe the cost to sponsor is around $36 a month. For that, the kids get two meals a day, as much clean water as they want, school uniforms and supplies, a safe environment, and love. Unfortunately, lots of kids in the community aren't sponsored. Take a look at Inca Link's website for sponsoring opportunities.
Speaking of kids, we spent an afternoon doing basically the same thing we did at the daycare at a community just outside of Trujillo called Huanchaco. Part of Huanchaco is geared towards tourists—it's an insider's surf beach. Just a few blocks from the beach, though, is the salt mine community. All of the gravel and sand that we used in our concrete work at the children's home was quarried there. Approximately twenty large strip-mining operations employ hundreds (thousands?) of workers. Most of them start there when they are eleven or twelve. The employees have to pay to enter and leave the mines, so they generally stay for a week at time in order to save money. We played with the younger brothers and sisters of kids who are already doing their part to keep their families from starving by working dangerous jobs in the mines.
The majority of our time was spent doing construction work on the Albergue, the children's home being built close to one of the dumps. Seventy-two children will eventually be housed there. Right now, one dormitory, which will be able to sleep twenty-four kids, is almost done. The cafeteria is nearing completion as well. Most of the actual construction our team did was on the director's house and the vocational center.
The vocational center was a field with a few trenches in it when we arrived. By the time we left, it was a gridwork of holes and trenches, some of which were filled with concrete and had rebar protruding. No backhoes, no concrete trucks. We were fortunate to have a concrete mixer. Another team just left, and between us and them, the foundation is nearly done.
The director's house had special meaning for our team. Hopefully, in January, Mike and Karen Kimbro and their four children will be moving into that house to be directors of the Albergue. I said “hopefully,” because the Kimbros still need people to partner with them. Karen and their oldest son Caleb were on the team with us. It was so special to see Karen placing bricks in her future home. The foundation was mostly done on it when we arrived. We poured the stem walls and carried bricks so the pros could lay them. One wall was almost done when we left. From the most recent pictures, it looks like the first-floor masonry work is now finished.
It's easy to say, “We poured concrete.” However, it's important to visualize the amount of work that went into getting one bag of Portland cement from package to placement. Jose, the man in charge of the mixer, poured the appropriate amount of water into the mixer. He eyeballed it. We dumped the ninety pound bag into it. Then, we dumped in fourteen five gallon buckets filled with gravel and sand. I guess around here the ratio is 14 shovelfuls to one bag. Not in Peru. Some folks (like Amy!:) shoveled gravel and sand for days on end, filling those buckets. The concrete was then moved either by wheelbarrow or bucket to be dumped into footers or concrete forms where large rock were tossed in as filler.
I don't work in construction here, but it's still easy for me—and probably most of us—to take for granted the simple conveniences we have that make work go so much faster. Like cutoff saws and grinding wheels for cutting rebar. Every piece of rebar was cut by hand and then tied by hand into a gridwork. Some folks used a hacksaw for hours or even days. (Amy and John had the pleasure of cutting 100 lengths of rebar by hand one morning!) Concrete trucks, backhoes, welldiggers, etc. would come in handy, too. Sweat and muscle get the job done, though.
Before we really got into the concrete full-swing, most of us were using shovels. I don't know how long it takes a back hoe to make a 4 ½ square by 5 foot deep hole. I know exactly how long it takes a person with a shovel to do it.
Trujillo receives less than an inch of rain a year. As such, there's not a lot of green. For the kids, though, it'd be nice for them to have a yard to play on, instead of the sand that is everywhere. One group “wove” bermuda grass into the ground with hopes that in a few months there will be a mat of grass for kids to run around on.
Of course, it has to be watered! Fortunately, Wine to Water put in a well on the property. Hand dug. 36 meters. That's 118 feet. The worker would dig a few feet, put in a form, pour concrete in a ring. They would then wait for it to dry. Once dry, keep working. They worked around the clock. Unfortunately, about seventy feet down, they struck rock. The worker then used a mallet and a chisel. No kidding. Outside the well, there's a huge pile of gravel that was all chipped by hand.
Simple things, but meeting physical needs of people in need is a mandate. It has to happen before, or at least at the same time as, trying to meet emotional and spiritual needs.
So why give to short-term missions? That's the real question. Why not just send the money to where it's needed? The locals could get a lot more work done for the same amount, and airfare wouldn't be an issue.
Great questions! Short-term missions are about getting work done. Definitely. In Trujillo, short-term teams built the daycare where we played with the kids. Short-term teams have done and will do a lot of the work on the children's home. They're free labor.
Sure, and that's important. Equally important, I think, is that unreached community members either benefit from or see the work that these “gringos” come down and do out of love. We—the short-term team members—might not be the ones to share the gospel, but maybe the witness our work and joy provide while we're there can plant a seed so that when someone does witness or invites them to small group or church, they'll be ready to open their hearts.
How about the selfish answer? Short-term missions directly benefits the participants. At the most superficial level, it's an adventure to a new place. Great. How about a little deeper, though?
Our team was fantastic. When I was a teenager, I went on an annual missions “trip.” I loved them. Still do. But there was always drama. Issues that came up. Problems.
We didn't have any of that.
We were a mix of college students, youth, and adults ranging from early twenties to late sixties. Everyone gave 110%; everyone chose joy instead of indulging in weariness and all the fun expressions that can go along with it; everyone remembered we were there to help and be examples. What a fantastic group!
Even cooler, though, was seeing changes in our team members throughout the time we spent together. Personally, I feel like this experience has put me back on the path that God chose for me. I feel like it has helped me to open my heart to new possibilities. I feel like it has helped show me a new direction for our lives, a direction which is not me-centered or even us-centered but God-centered.
David
